MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Sen. Richard Burr may have been singled out by the FBI because President Trump “doesn’t like” him as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
On Wednesday night, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, was served a warrant from the FBI for his cellphone in connection to an insider trading investigation related to a series of stock sales as he was receiving coronavirus briefings in February. On Thursday morning, Scarborough questioned why Burr was singled out by the FBI when several other senators who made similar sales were not served with a warrant.
“Obviously, the president was very upset that Richard Burr did his job on the Intel Community. They said that, actually, Vladimir Putin was trying to interfere with the U.S. election,” Scarborough said.
“Kelly Loeffler also was implicated for making money off of this pandemic. Any reports? Did they seize her cellphone, as well, or did they just seize — did [Attorney General William] Barr and the Justice Department just seize the cellphone of the Republican that Donald Trump doesn’t like?” Scarborough asked.
Kasie Hunt, a reporter for MSNBC, pointed out that Loeffler, a Republican senator from Georgia, is not the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and did not have access to the same set of information as Burr. She also noted that Burr sold a much larger portion of his net worth than Loeffler did. Loeffler has fully denied wrongdoing by noting that she has her stocks in a blind trust and said that she was not notified of the sales until after they were made.
Hunt agreed with Scarborough that the Republican frustration with Burr has been consistent since Trump took office. She noted that Burr has been hesitant to dig into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and that he disapproved of Trump’s first attempt to appoint Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican, as director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe has since been renominated to replace acting Director Richard Grenell.
The segment of Morning Joe aired before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that Burr said he would be stepping down as chairman of the intelligence panel while the federal investigation plays out.
Soon after that news broke, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, confirmed that she had spoken to the FBI about similar stock sales that had also come under scrutiny.
Burr has denied any wrongdoing in his stock sales. He claimed that all of his financial decisions were made with information available to the general public.
His committee has released multiple updates on its investigation into Russian interference. The most recent findings defended 2017’s intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.
